


Knowledge is Power

by therentistoodamnhigh



Series: it's either psychosis or a higher state of reality [1]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Lovecraftian, i have no idea how to tag this, memory consumption, mental mindfuckery, no tentacles with the lovecraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-14 22:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13599345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therentistoodamnhigh/pseuds/therentistoodamnhigh
Summary: I present to you all a shiny new ego: Professor Iplier, a man who made a deal for Knowledge in exchange for being the puppet and showman of old gods. Here, a student of his finds something they shouldn’t, and goes to Professor Iplier for answers. He’s not exactly helpful.Inspired bythis post, mostly.





	Knowledge is Power

**Author's Note:**

> all the other stuff i've seen for professor iplier is kinda boring tbh??? granted i haven't looked very hard. prof iplier is my new cheerful, lovecraftian ego child and i love him
> 
> also consider the following mental image: prof iplier, looking at the camera with his head tilted to the side, smiling placidly. his hands are clasped behind his back, sleeves rolled up above his elbows. behind him looms lovecraftian, eldritch monstrosities. the caption: "Was there anything else you wanted to ask?"

It was precisely 2:34 pm, partway into Professor Iplier’s office hours, and the student was standing anxiously in front of the cracked-open door, deciding on how to enter. After a few moments of shifting from foot to foot, they knocked lightly and pushed the door inward, entering carefully.

The professor looked up at the movement and his face brightened. “Ah, good to see you! Your name's Irwin, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” the student confirmed. Their eyes were caught on the way the warm light of the antique lamp on the professor’s desk contrasted with the blue light of his laptop. An old-looking book lay open on the desk next to his hand, the pages gold-edged and full of curly script.

“Have a seat! What can I help you with, Irwin?” The nameplate on top of his desk gleamed in the lamp light, the neat block lettering of “Francis J. Iplier” looking so clean and precise in contrast to the cozy, cluttered mess of his office. (“ _ Professor _ Iplier, not  _ Doctor _ Iplier. Dr. Iplier is my cousin,” he’d told them the first day of class.)

Out of reflex, Irwin pushed the door closed to a bare crack. With the door shut, it was as if they’d stepped into the past, filled with dusty books, worn wood, and yellow light. The atmosphere felt at once both dangerous and benign, and the student hastened to the offered chair opposite the desk, shrugging off their backpack, as if proximity to the charming professor would protect them. The wooden chair creaked as they sat down and scooted it closer to a clear square of space on the desk.

“Yeah, uh, it’s about something you said in class, you wanted us to us to research the gods of an old religion, but all I’m getting are these weird results? It’s like- the web pages go all funky and- I can’t even explain it, it’s so weird,” Irwin explained, as they pulled out their notebook. 

Professor Iplier frowned, eyes concerned behind the rimless circular glasses. “You shouldn’t be having problems. What did you put into the search engine?” 

“Uhh.” The student flipped through their notebook for the right page. “This.” They turned the notebook around and pointed to the word.

Upon seeing the word, Professor Iplier’s eyes widened and he began hastily scribbling it out with his pen until nothing of the word remained visible. 

Irwin jerked their hand back a little, index finger curling a little into the rest of their fist. They found themselves staring at the flexing forearm muscles and the creases in the rolled-up sleeves of the white dress shirt and the contrast between the navy blue of the patterned sweater vest and the bleached-whiteness.

Abruptly the professor stopped and he sat back a little, examining the page with an inscrutable expression. He wrote a new word on the paper, carefully and in big letters, underlined twice and circled once. He smiled cheerily at Irwin and the expression looked wrong, somehow. “Always make sure you spell these things right, otherwise things get pretty messy.” He chuckled with good-humor. The air felt wrong, too. The Professor’s gaze turned intense and he placed a hand over Irwin’s. “In all seriousness, make sure you’ve entered the name I’ve given you when you do your research. Some…  _ unpleasant _ things happen if you spell it wrong.”

As Professor Iplier spoke, Irwin felt compelled to maintain eye contact with him, and the room seemed to warp at the edges of their vision, like they’d been staring too hard, and their head started to hurt. He was  _ saying _ things and they should really focus on that, but it was so  _ hard _ , and their chest was filling up with dread and a mild warning. And then he was pulling away, taking the warmth of his hand away too, and it felt as though there was something terrible looming over head, twisting and writhing and vast, too awful to comprehend. With a wrench of horror in their chest it was like their mind’s eye could see a faint outline of it behind their professor, even as he smiled placidly at them, warping the shelving on the other side of the room.

Irwin’s phone vibrated once in their pants and they startled badly, the whateveritwas disappearing as if it had never been there. Speaking of… why had they come to Professor IIplier’s office? There must’ve been a good reason…

Professor Iplier was smiling kindly at them, eyes warm and kind. “I’m sorry, I thought you heard me. Was there anything else you wanted to ask?”

... _ was _ there? They couldn’t remember. It was as if they’d sat down and completely blanked out. But there were a few lines of new writing in Professor Iplier’s script in their notebook, so maybe whatever it was had already been handled, even if they didn’t remember. Maybe they were just tired. “Uhh… no? I think that was it.” They felt dazed, kinda disoriented. They wanted coffee.

The professor smiled brightly at them, and it pinged wrongly in their chest. “Great! Let me know if you need anything else, alright? I’m always happy to answer questions.”

“Yeah, thanks, I will.” Irwin managed a smile as they put away their notebook. They felt kinda dizzy and what time was it? They had homework to do. “See you in class, Professor.”

“See you in class,” Professor Iplier returned, his baritone voice rich as he bid the student goodbye.

Irwin stood up and pulled their backpack on, trying not to flush out of awkwardness. They pulled the office door shut as they left, and stood dazedly in the hall for a few moments and then left.

The click of the door shutting was loud in the office, and Iplier grinned, running a tongue over his teeth. Taking knowledge via touch of the hand was not usually so potent, but knowledge of that particular old god was always very potent, rich and forbidden like extra dark chocolate. Fizzy, too, with technology involved. Tech of this day and age always made knowledge taste much more interesting. 

In any case, Irwin was much better off without the knowledge, the Professor reasoned; college students in this field got themselves in more trouble than they could handle, and the taste of their knowledge typically wasn’t worth it. Speaking of hunger, he hadn’t eaten anything particularly substantial this week, perhaps he could trouble one of the engineering professors for something? He’d been craving something dense and savory recently, he could always count on them to satisfy him. Well. As satisfied as he could get, anyway; the pursuit of knowledge was always ongoing, there was always more to learn, to know, to  _ c o n s u m e _ .

His stomach growled and he chuckled to himself. Talk about timing. Oh, but didn’t he have that dinner with Dr. Robbins and his colleagues? That would work. 

Professor Iplier glanced at the clock; 2:47 pm. “Well, that didn’t take very long,” he said to himself. “Time to get back to work.” He bent his head over his desk. The text in the open book writhed gently, teasing at the fabric of reality.


End file.
